After clearing the legislative branch of government, a private member’s bill to legalize marijuana will be introduced to Parliament during this year’s winter session.

The legalization of cannabis in India has significant governmental support. Maneka Gandhi, India’s Minister of Women and Child Development, made a statement this past August calling for the legalization of medical marijuana. Also in August, the government issued a license to the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research for the cultivation of medical marijuana and study of medical marijuana and its application in the treatment of epilepsy and mitigation of chemotherapy-induced side effects.

MP Dharamvira Gandhi is a retired cardiologist and a longtime supporter of legal marijuana. His bill is intended to differentiate between hard and soft drugs in hopes of resolving issues that were not resolved by the 1985 Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act, which did nothing to reduce demand for the drug.

“The 30 years’ period of enactment and implementation of NDPS Act has produced results contrary to the desired results,” said Gandhi in November. “Thirty years down the line, where do we stand? The fact of the matter is that the NDPS Act has not only failed in achieving its professed goals, but this war on drugs has delivered results directly opposite to what it aimed to achieve. There can be no better verdict and/or evaluation of such punitive drug laws than frank admission statement of the United Nations Conference on 12th March 2009, admitting that the war on drugs has failed,” he said.

Paraguay’s Congress passed a bill on Tuesday creating a state-sponsored system to import marijuana seeds and grow the plant for medical uses, a decision that followed other countries in Latin America.

The landlocked South American nation had authorized the importing of cannabis oil in May, under control of the health ministry, and Tuesday’s decision was celebrated by patients their and loved ones for making it more readily available.

“We are very happy because this will also allow for the import of seeds for oil production,” said Roberto Cabanas, vice president Paraguay’s medicinal cannabis organization. His daughter has Dravet syndrome and the family was paying $300 a month for imported cannabis oil.